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拍品專文
This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin catalogue critique de l'oeuvre sculpté currently being prepared by the Comité Auguste Rodin at Galerie Brame et Lorenceau under the direction of Jérôme Le Blay under the archive number 2019-5997B.
'I do not know, in any art, of an evocation of souls so splendidly compelling,' Octave Mirbeau declared in 1889, when Rodin first exhibited Les bourgeois de Calais, his earliest commission for a free-standing, public monument and one of the defining projects of his career (quoted in J.L. Tancock, The sculpture of Auguste Rodin, 1976, p. 388). Comprised of six individual figures set on integral bases, the group commemorates the heroism of six citizens of Calais who in 1347, during the Hundred Years’ War, volunteered to surrender themselves to King Edward III of England in exchange for the liberation of their city, which had been besieged for nearly a year. In a radical departure from traditional heroic monuments, Rodin eschewed all allegorical trappings, instead depicting the moment that the burghers, clad in sackcloth and nooses as Edward demanded, began their painful leave, their emotions conflicted and their suffering agonizingly real.
The maquette for this project was delivered to the mayor of Calais in July 1885 and the finished monument inaugurated in the town square ten years later, after which Rodin continued to make use of the powerfully expressive statues, producing new bronze casts of individual figures and heads for eager collectors. The present lot features Jean de Fiennes, one of the six burghers, who was the captain of the town of Calais. Jean was responsible for opening the gates of the town, first approaching King Edward III with a rope around his neck, thus inspiring the five others to follow his lead. 'The monument swiftly moved beyond the context of local history to take its place alongside the great works of sculpture,' Le Normand-Romain has written. 'By rejecting the descriptive style of conventional public monuments in order to portray what real people felt...Rodin had created one of the masterpieces of a period that focused on man and his inner world' (ibid., p. 214).
'I do not know, in any art, of an evocation of souls so splendidly compelling,' Octave Mirbeau declared in 1889, when Rodin first exhibited Les bourgeois de Calais, his earliest commission for a free-standing, public monument and one of the defining projects of his career (quoted in J.L. Tancock, The sculpture of Auguste Rodin, 1976, p. 388). Comprised of six individual figures set on integral bases, the group commemorates the heroism of six citizens of Calais who in 1347, during the Hundred Years’ War, volunteered to surrender themselves to King Edward III of England in exchange for the liberation of their city, which had been besieged for nearly a year. In a radical departure from traditional heroic monuments, Rodin eschewed all allegorical trappings, instead depicting the moment that the burghers, clad in sackcloth and nooses as Edward demanded, began their painful leave, their emotions conflicted and their suffering agonizingly real.
The maquette for this project was delivered to the mayor of Calais in July 1885 and the finished monument inaugurated in the town square ten years later, after which Rodin continued to make use of the powerfully expressive statues, producing new bronze casts of individual figures and heads for eager collectors. The present lot features Jean de Fiennes, one of the six burghers, who was the captain of the town of Calais. Jean was responsible for opening the gates of the town, first approaching King Edward III with a rope around his neck, thus inspiring the five others to follow his lead. 'The monument swiftly moved beyond the context of local history to take its place alongside the great works of sculpture,' Le Normand-Romain has written. 'By rejecting the descriptive style of conventional public monuments in order to portray what real people felt...Rodin had created one of the masterpieces of a period that focused on man and his inner world' (ibid., p. 214).